Indiana or Bust: Day 2

After 10 hours of driving, I covered 700 more miles today, starting in Utah this morning, then across all of Wyoming, and finally into Nebraska in the evening. It took about 12 hours total after a couple stops for quick naps and food and gas along the way.

Some photos

Over the hump!

After a long morning of slowly climbing up and up through Wyoming, I took a quick break to Google where the Continental Divide was actually going to be on my trip across Wyoming. I remember when I crossed it in Montana's Glacier National Park years ago, because it was completely obvious. You crest a knife's edge in the road running through the terrain and it was easy to see that rain falling on one side would go to the Pacific Ocean, and rain on the other side was headed to the Missouri River and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.

Strangely, Wyoming calls it out with roadside signs twice on interstate 80, once around 6800 feet of elevation 150mi in and again about fifty miles later at 7,000 feet. Even weirder, the road continued to climb for another 150 miles after the last sign and interstate 80 actually topped out around 8,600 feet before it started slowly descending towards Nebraska. So that's three divides instead of one?

I thought I understood how the Continental Divide works—I was even a teaching assistant for a hydrology/limnology class in grad school—but I guess the path water takes into a giant watershed can vary at these different points. But I still think it's weird to see the road climb higher after hitting that 7,000' mark and sign.

A new state appears!

I was hoping to mark off a few more new-to-me states on this trip, and Nebraska is my first completely new state on this trip. I ran a quick app to figure out I've been to 27 states out of the 50, which is about one every two years of my life, so I guess I'll hit all 50 by the time I turn 100. I once worked with a guy who made a point to show his kids all 50 states before they turned 18, and I always thought that was an admirable goal and a fun project.

I should be clear—I only count states according to a strict method I developed that’s worth explaining.

Haughey's Law of Visited States

Whenever I ask friends what they consider the lowest bar to saying you've been to a US state, I get a different answer. Sometimes it's a precise minimum number of hours spent in the state, some say it counts when you spend any money there, and some say it counts when you've eaten something there.

Some of my friends (the ones that are monsters) even count airports they merely connect through, which is a travesty. Personally, I've flown through the Charleston airport a number of times on my way elsewhere, but I've never set foot or spent any time in South Carolina, so it remains on my unvisited list. Airports are a nebulous concept, a sort of DMZ more akin to international waters.

Have you ever flown through Vancouver B.C.'s airport on your way back to America? They put Americans in a special terminal where all prices are in USD and the cashiers give you change in American dollars and coins even though you're in Canada, over 50 miles away from the US border. Somehow when you're there you're within a magical bubble of "america" that only exists inside that one building at YVR.

So here's my personal rule, and I admit it may upset some of you reading:

You may only consider a US state visited if you sleep at least one night within the borders of that state

I understand it may be harsh—especially for road trips—but I think it's fair. You can't fully experience a new land until you've slept, woken up, walked around, eaten something, and truly lived within it.

When I went to Wallops, Virginia for a NASA space launch I needed an extra battery for my digital camera and the closest store that had one in stock was only an hour away, but in Delaware. So technically I drove from Virginia to Maryland to Delaware and then back, but to this day I can't say I've truly been to Delaware or Maryland (even though I also got crab cakes for dinner in Maryland) because I slept at a hotel in Virginia on that trip.

I'm strict about this rule, so much so that the first week I ever spent in Kansas City years ago, we booked a hotel that happened to be on the Kansas side closer to where we needed to be for a wedding. I didn't mark off Missouri until I stayed in downtown KC earlier this year for a soccer game. Same goes for Utah, a state I hiked five miles through on my way to Page, Arizona on a week-long, 35 mile backpacking trip in my 20s, but we never set up camp actually in Utah that first day so it didn't count until I first went there a few years ago.

So my 27 states (plus DC too) have a slightly higher bar for consideration, but I seriously hope to hit all 50 someday soon.

I've truly lucked out on weather

Maybe it's luck (or maybe it's climate change), but it was kind of amazing to drive across the whole of Wyoming in early December with temps above freezing the whole trip. The roads are clear and dry, making a high speed cannonball run across the country easy.

I know this is unusual because I've never ventured across highway 80 past Salt Lake City before, and I had no idea there are giant railroad crossing gates on the freeway after every town, and signs every 20 miles or so saying the freeway is closed if the lights on the sign are flashing. Every on-ramp also has the railroad gates too, to prevent people from getting onto a closed freeway.

I didn't know about this at all, and it's surprising because two years ago I drove across Montana in late December when it was -40º out and the freeways were open with a foot of snow and ice on them and it was sketchy as hell and exactly like being on the Planet Hoth. Did you notice that I didn't have to specify Fahrenheit or Celsius on that temperature? That's because they're one and the same after -37º below. The truck I was driving barely ran at that temperature.

I was going to take this road trip any week in the past two months and I randomly chose the week after Thanksgiving and it looks like I will have blue skies and dry roads across the whole country this week. That's incredibly lucky and makes the trip much easier.

Wamsutter Conoco

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, I saw a sign that the next exit was for a tiny town of Wamsutter, Wyoming. Then there was a big sign that said NEXT STOP: The Wamsutter Conoco!

It's a town and a name brand of gasoline, but it was such a weird amalgam of consonants and syllables that I kept saying and repeating and rolling the phrase over in my head for the next two days. Wamsutter Conoco. I'm stopping at the Wamsutter Conoco. I'm shopping at the Wamsutter Conoco. Have you been to the Wamsutter Conoco? You really should go—it's lovely this time of year.

It became my favorite new nonsense phrase. I wished I could have stayed in that one-exit town just to happily greet passersby saying hello the next morning with a "…and a Wamsutter Conoco to you too, my good sir!

A question remains

Tomorrow I could go all the way to Indiana, but it would be a hellish 13-14 hour day so instead I'm going to enjoy the trip more by splitting it up into two easier days. But I have a choice in the path I can take. One path takes me through Iowa and I could mark yet another new-to-me state as visited when I stay at a hotel somewhere there tomorrow night. Or, I could head through KC and eventually hit St. Louis, which I've never been to and always wanted to visit too.

I'd also like to explore Nebraska in the daytime tomorrow, since I'm likely to pass through Omaha and Lincoln at some point. Speaking of, if I was Warren Buffet I would build a massive BuffetLand amusement park in Omaha with all that money and it would feature financial system-themed rides like a roller coaster called Market Adjustment with a killer drop, or a coaster called IPO that blasts you up a hill to get weightless for a few seconds before it slams on the brakes completely stopping at the end, or the dreaded Vanguard Index Fund ride that just slowly kind of goes up, sort of, and doesn't really move around much at all but everyone congratulates you for getting on it. And yes, all food would be included with the price of tickets, served buffet style, of course.

Why do I like road trips?

A question I get from friends and one I ask myself is why I enjoy sitting inside a car by myself for many hours a day mindlessly letting miles tick by and I think it's because of my mish-mashed brain. The other day I took an online adult ADHD test and I scored just inside the "you totally/definitely have this" level and I'm fine with that, as it's something I've learned to live with for 50 years and it's not something I'm going to run and seek treatment for. It's made me who I am and that's fine (though this is what the inside of my head sounds like most of my waking hours).

I realize when looking back, every great idea I've had came to me while I was in a shower or in a car taking a long drive. Both situations feature lots of white noise that drowns everything else out and they're both situations that force you to focus on a single task so your distractions melt away and you can concentrate on thinking.

I also realize I probably loved flatland BMX as a teen because it was the only time I could clear my head, because if you're not paying 100% attention to where your legs and hands and feet are AT ALL TIMES, you can wake up in a hospital bed in an split second.

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It's also probably why my current favorite thing to do is take off to Utah to do some off-roading in my Jeep. That combines a whole day (each way!) of long road trip thinking then when you get to Moab and you're on difficult trails where your entire focus narrows to "get through this climb/cliff/drop to stay alive and not roll the Jeep and die" which really cuts through the noise.

I'll figure out where to head tomorrow in the morning, but I'm looking forward to seeing more new cities and sights no matter what path I take.

Jump to the Day 3 recap immediately up ahead.